Kevin McCollum is a high school junior with the usual things on his mind: getting good grades, having fun, and finding a boyfriend. The last one was eluding him until he noticed the "parkour guy." After several days of pretending to study while watching the attractive teen jump on rocks, run up trees, and do flips, Shin finally comes over to introduce himself. As they start dating, Kevin should've known it wouldn't be that easy.
Shin's parents only want their son to date Japanese boys. When cultures clash and pressures mount, Kevin has no idea how to subvert traditions and Shin's parents to keep the boy he cares about.
Kevin will need to clear some tricky obstacles to make his modern love story a reality.
I'm a huge YA fan, so I was excited to not only read one from a new-2-me author, but in audio. Flipping for Him ended up being a cute story of young love, but overall it fell a bit flat for me.
Kevin is hanging out at the park, thinking of his ex and how he'd like to find that kind of connection again with someone else. There are some guys doing parkour and one catches his eye. He then finds himself coming up with excuses to study at this park where he can ogle this cute guy jumping around.
First of all, I had honestly never heard of parkour before. I had to look it up to see if it really is a thing. And it is! I don't know if that makes me old or just really uncool (<- proven here by my use of the word 'uncool'). But those dudes are cray-zay! For real, they jump around and do tricks on rocks and concrete. I really liked how parkour played a part in the story and I learned something new. Now if it were to come up in conversation, I can be all, "Oh yeah. Sure. I totally know parkour." *shrugs* No big deal.
Back to the story, turns out Kevin wasn't the only one checking someone out, his crush was ogling him, too. Shin came up an introduced himself, which led to dates and kisses and cuteness.
Kevin and Shin were sweet and just what I love in a YA, but the drama surrounding Shin's family and Quan was borderline silly to me. Shin's family is traditional and expects him to be with someone who is Japanese. Girl or boy, it doesn't matter, as long as they're Japanese. Unfortunately, I'm sure this rings true for many families, but what I didn't enjoy was the resolution to all this. It was very anticlimactic as most of the problems were resolved off-page. Not to mention it felt very unrealistic. Shin's family changed their minds, just like that? I would think years and years of "traditions" would be further ingrained in their minds and wouldn't be so easily erased.
Jason Frazier is a good narrator, especially for YA or NA. He has a young voice and has good intonation. He was a little breathy, which was awkward sometimes. But it was a good listen, I'd definitely listen to Jason Frazier again.
I think if Flipping for Him would have stayed with on the sweet and cute side, I'd have enjoyed it more. While I can't highly recommend it, I'll look for more Jeff Adams in the future.
A copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment